“Don’t you want to?”
“Why not?” asked Joe. “I’ve met a couple presidents. It won’t hurt to meet one more.”
She raised a brow. “When did you meet a couple presidents? I don’t think you ever mentioned that before.”
“I’ll tell you all about it later,” he said.
She got up. “Well, like I say, I haven’t met any presidents, and I’m not going to meet this one all soaked with clam juice. I’m going to go home and change. You can tell me about your presidents on the way.”
“Informality is the dress code,” I said. “Personally, I only plan on changing into clean shorts and another T-shirt.”
They got into their car and drove up the driveway. They hadn’t been gone long when two Secret Service cars came down the sandy lane. Ted and Joan and two other agents got out of the first one.
“Where are your cousins?” asked Joan immediately.
“Over on Chappy with the Skye twins and various male companions,” I said. “Having a last Vineyard fling before they have to go home.”
“I don’t like it,” said Ted, frowning.
“You’re not the liking type,” I said. “Stop worrying. They’re fine. Ben Miller is in custody overseas, and Walt Pomerlieu is in the Dukes County jail, where you wanted to put me the first time we met, so the cousins are in no danger from anybody.”
“There are always scumbags and crazies out there,” said Ted, as the second car disgorged other agents.
“Nobody knows where the kids are, and they’re coming back in a couple of hours,” I said. “Why didn’t you tell me it was Joan who came down to my house through the woods? Why shouldn’t I know she was checking things out to make sure the bad guys weren’t there?”
“Why should I tell you anything?” asked ever-friendly Ted.
Joan stood in front of the other agents and made a broad gesture that took in most of western civilization. “All right, let’s secure the place. Check everything out.”
The agents began to move.
“Give me the guest list,” said Ted. He took it and frowned some more. “You know these people?” When I said yes, he didn’t seem to believe me. Once again I was glad I wasn’t a Secret Service agent. What suspicious lives they led.
“Before the girls get back and use up all the hot water,” said Zee, “I am taking a shower and washing my hair.”
I decided not to repeat my sage maxim that the reason women don’t run the world is because they don’t have time to do that and wash their hair, too.
Later, when John Skye’s Wagoneer came down the drive, whichever twin was driving was wide-eyed.
“Cricket told us who she was while we were out there on the beach! You’d think we would have guessed, but . . . And now there’s a couple of Secret Service guys and an Edgartown cop up there at the end of your driveway! They stopped us and checked our names on a list before we could come on down! Wow!”
“It’s like those security checks on airplanes,” I said. “They may be inconvenient, but we should be glad they’re there.”
“I guess!”
“And are your twin noses out of joint because we’ve all been fibbing about my cousins?”
“No! We think it’s great! Wait till we tell our friends! Besides, Cricket’s still our friend, anyway, even if she isn’t Debby anymore!”
To verify this, there were hugs inside the Wagoneer. Then Karen and Debby climbed out and there were good-byes and see-you-laters before the Wagoneer headed for home so the twins could change into their clambake clothes.
“How were things at the beach?” I asked my sandy-haired, salty-skinned cousins.
They’d been great.
And was Acey Doucette coming to the afternoon shindig?
He was. Karen might have someone back in Washington, but a beau in the hand was . . . etc.
Well, I thought, maybe being in the presidential presence would infuse Acey with greater literary energies; enough, perhaps, so that he might even finish a chapter and start another. Who knew what good might come of this encounter?
While Karen and Debby took turns in the shower, Zee was in our bedroom, busy doing whatever it is that women do with themselves to make themselves feel presentable. Some women, I was sure, probably had to do a lot of that, but I couldn’t see that Zee needed to. Whenever I mentioned this, however, she would smile patiently, pat me on the cheek, and say I just didn’t understand, but that it wasn’t my fault, because it was a testosterone thing, a kind of blindness caused by hormones.
The tables and chairs in the yard and up on the balcony would seat everybody who was coming, so I didn’t have to tend to that. Out by the beech tree I set up the table I use to hold food and utensils when we have clambakes, and put the gas grill nearby with its big cooking pot. I put some water in the bottom of the pot and emptied the bags of steamer clams on top of it, so they’d have time to thaw a bit more before cooking time. Then I went in and got to work peeling potatoes, carrots, and onions. When they were ready, I put them to boil on the stove, and cut kielbasa and linguiça into short lengths, to go along with the hot dogs I’d also be cooking. When that was done, I fixed garlic bread and wrapped it in tinfoil for future warming, then melted enough additional butter to go along with the steamers and mussels, and set that pot at the back of the stove. Then I got ice out of the freezer and put it in my big cooler, along with a case of Sam Adams, soft drinks, and three bottles of sauvignon blanc, the house white.
I put the cooler in the shade out by the food table and set a garbage can for rubbish beside the entrance to the outdoor shower, and I’d done as much preparing as I could do for the moment. Later, just before people were scheduled to show up, I’d put out the paper napkins, plastic glasses, heavy paper plates, and the plastic knives and forks. Plastic and paper. Two more of the handy materials of modern times. Tacky, maybe, but very utile.
Not unlike myself, perhaps.
I was showered, shaved, and togged in clean shorts and a T-shirt that said YOU CAN’T KILL A DEAD DOG when the first cars began coming down the drive. By the time the presidential caravan arrived, late, as the Great Man had a habit of being, or so I’d been told, everybody else was already there, including Jake Spitz, who, when Walt Pomerlieu’s name came up, refrained from gloating over the fact that Pomerlieu was Secret Service, not FBI.
The presidential caravan was shorter than usual, consisting of only three cars: the armored Suburban that conveyed the Callahans; one car full of casually dressed agents, who immediately made themselves as inconspicuous as possible; and a third, which contained, among other people, photographers who seemed intent upon recording everything for posterity.
President Joe Callahan turned out to be a tall man with a thick head of hair and a pair of sharp eyes. He and his wife were cordiality itself, greeting Zee and me with apparently unaffected pleasure, kissing their shining daughter, shaking the hands of deferential Karen and the other guests, and, in general, making everyone feel at ease. They were born politicians, I thought, as the cameras clicked.
I handed the president a beer and poured white wine for his wife, then pointed to the cooler. “That’s the bar. The host gets you the first one. After that, you’re on your own.”
They laughed. “Fair enough.”
Cricket was right there with Allen Freeman. “Daddy, can I have a beer? J.W. wouldn’t give me any, but he says that today if it’s okay with you, it’s okay with him.”
“Well, I don’t know,” said her mother.
“Mom! I’m sixteen! It’s only one beer. You let me have wine and champagne sometimes!”
“Just a little. And only sometimes.”
“Daddy? Just one beer?”
“It’s illegal.”
“Just one?”
He smiled. “Just one.”
“All right!”
“Now that you’ve got it,” I said to her, “I hope you appreciate it. That’s Sam Adams, America’s finest bottled beer, and you shouldn’t waste a drop.”
“How about Allen? Can he have one, too?”
“I’m going over to get the grill started,” I said. “I’m not going to be watching the cooler.”
“I think I’ll settle for a soda,” said diplomatic Allen, as I walked away. He still seemed a bit stunned by his discovery that Debby was really Cricket Callahan.
There was food for all.
The first course was littlenecks on the half shell, accompanied by seafood sauce. Next came clams Casino, a dish so good that it’s gobbled up even by people who don’t think they like clams, including those who wouldn’t think of eating a littleneck. Then came mussels steamed in white wine and served with garlic butter. Yum, as always.
Next came stuffed quahogs, hot and spicy from the oven. I use a bastardized version of Euell Gibbons’s recipe from Stalking the Blue-Eyed Scallop, one of the finest of the natural food cookbooks. What an irony that old Euell, who developed so many excellent recipes for wild foods, should have died of stomach ulcers. Either there’s no justice, or God has a wicked sense of humor.
Finally came the steamers, accompanied by boiled potatoes, carrots, and onions, and by steamed kielbasa, linguiça, and hot dogs, and by garlic bread.
There was watermelon for dessert.
Delish, from soup to nuts. When we were through, the garbage barrel was stuffed with rubbish, and the humans were stuffed with food.
The cameras had clicked steadily and, as near as I could tell, everyone had had a good time. Now, the Secret Service people began to assemble.
Joe Callahan was sitting with me on our balcony, looking out over the garden, Sengekontacket Pond, and the barrier beach beyond to the waters of Nantucket Sound, where sailboats were motoring home in the windless evening. “Terrific place you’ve got. I see why Cricket loves it here. I wish we could live like this.”
“But you can’t,” I said. “You’ve chosen another kind of life.”
He looked at me, then nodded. “Yes. Of course you’re right.”
A Secret Service agent stood looking up at us. “Mr. President, you have another engagement this evening.”
Callahan stood up. “A lot of this job is going places you don’t necessarily want to go and seeing people you don’t necessarily want to see.” He put out his hand. “Thank you for everything. Let us know if you ever get to Washington. We’d like to see you. Cricket, especially. She’s become very fond of you.”
“If we get there, I’ll let you know.”
By the time we got downstairs, someone had arranged our friends into a sort of waiting line, and the president and his wife and daughter passed along it, shaking hands and saying good-byes, on their way to the caravan of cars that was lined up in preparation for departure. There, Zee and I got final handshakes, and a quick kiss for each of us from Cricket.
“Good-bye,” she said. “I had a wonderful time. You’re good cousins. I got to go to the beach, and to go clamming, and to pull in a bluefish, and to go conching, and shooting, and to meet people I never would have met!”
“Come back,” I said. “You have what it takes to be an islander.”
“I will!”
Then the caravan was gone.
“Well,” said Zee, “they were nice.”
“I wouldn’t want his job,” I said.
“No.”
“I think there’s enough beer for one more round,” said John Skye, heading for the cooler.
“Not for me,” said Zee, her hand on her stomach. She turned toward me and hooked her other hand around my neck and pulled me down for a kiss. “I love you.”
“Even though I don’t have a steady job?”
“And because you don’t own a suit, either.”
We’d barely finished breakfast the next morning when a car came down the driveway.
“Somebody forgot something,” said Zee.
But nobody had forgotten anything. The car stopped and Mike Qasim got out.
Good grief. I went out onto the lawn to meet him. He didn’t seem to have his Persian dagger, but I didn’t know if that was a good sign.
“Put up your hands and defend yourself, you wife thief! I’m going to teach you not to seduce my Dora!” Mike raised his fists and set his feet.
He was only as tall as my armpit and I outweighed him by fifty pounds, but he was a terrier.
“I never even tried to seduce your wife,” I said. “We asked her to come here so she could fix Cricket Callahan’s hair. To change the way she looked, so she could go places and not be recognized. You know who Cricket Callahan is. She’s the daughter of the president of the United States.”
“Oh, ho, what a liar you are! Cricket Callahan here? You must think me a fool! But you are the fool, as well as a wife thief! Put up your fists!” He tucked his chin into his shoulder and shuffled around on the grass, throwing short jabs in my direction.
I studied his style. “It wouldn’t be a fair fight,” I said. “I’m a lot bigger than you are.”
“Oh, you coward! Don’t worry about me. I am going to beat you until you can’t stand! Defend yourself, I say!” Mike’s face was red and he threw a right cross through the air.
“I’m not worried about you,” I said. “I’m worried about me. There’s twice as much of me for you to hit as there is of you for me to hit. It isn’t fair.”
He paused. “What are you saying? You are afraid to fight? Oh, you coward!” He shuffled toward me, throwing that jab through the air.
I held up my hands to stop him. “All right,” I said. “I’ll fight you. But it’s got to be fair.” I turned and called to Zee. “Bring out a piece of chalk, please.”
“Chalk?” asked Mike, lowering his hands.
Zee came out of the porch with a piece of chalk and looked at me with raised brows.
“Now, here’s what we’ll do,” I said. “Mike, you come over here and stand right in front of me, and Zee will mark the outlines of your body on my clothes. Okay? Then, when we fight, you can only hit me inside the chalk marks. That will make it a fair fight, because we’ll both have the same target area. All right?”
Mike frowned.
“You have to do it,” I said. “I’m an innocent man, as my wife or your wife will tell you, if you ask them, so if I have to fight you, I don’t want to be at a disadvantage. So come on over here and we’ll mark off your target area.”
Mike lifted his fists and let them drop. He frowned at me some more, then he looked at Zee. “Is it true what he says about Cricket Callahan? And that you were here all the time my wife was here?”
She nodded gravely. “It’s true. It was a top-secret operation, so no one, not even you, could know about it. But now the president has gone back to Washington and the story can be told.” She waved a finger at him. “You must learn to trust your wife, Mike. She loves you and would never betray you.”
His eyes narrowed, then widened. “You are right, madame! It was an act of patriotism, then! How excellent! Wait until I tell my friends and customers!” He came forward and shook my hand, then went and shook Zee’s. “My apologies, sir. Oh, what a glorious day!”
He got back into his car and drove away.
Zee looked at me and shook her head. “Where did you come up with that chalk bit?”
“Knowledge from a misspent youth. When I was a kid, I read that Abe Lincoln pulled that trick on somebody and got away with it. Anyway, I’m glad it helped defuse Mike.”
“Me, too. What a manly man you are.”
“Virility is its own reward, my sweet.”
Early in September, we got a package containing an inscribed photograph of the Callahans and the Jacksons together on our front lawn. We hung it in the living room, beside the one of Zee and her forty-two-pound bass (seven pounds bigger than any I’d ever caught).
A week later, smiling a radiant smile I’d not seen before, Zee handed me an envelope. I opened it and found myself looking at a Father’s Day card. It was months until Father’s Day, and it took me several heart-beats to know what it meant. Then I felt a rush
of excitement.
THREE RECIPES USED IN
A DEADLY VINEYARD HOLIDAY
(All delish, of course)
STUFFED BLUEFISH
Catch or buy a bluefish. Scale it and fillet it.
Use as much of it as you think you’ll need.
Place one fillet, skin-side down, in a greased roasting pan.
Cover the fillet with the stuffing of your choice. (I use store-bought mixes, then doctor them up with various spices and other stuff that I like, including some hot sauce.)
Place the second fillet, skin-side up, on top.
Bake, uncovered, in a 400-degree oven until done (about 20 minutes, depending on the size of the fish).
RITZ SCALLOPS
1 pound of scallops
1 cup crushed Ritz cracker crumbs
1/2 cup of butter
Mix scallops and crumbs together in a buttered baking dish, pour the butter over the top, bake for 25 minutes at 375 degrees. (Note: J.W. doubles this recipe in this book.)
CLAMS CASINO
Open as many hard-shell clams (quahogs) as you think you’ll need.
Loosen the meat from each clam and place it in a half shell.
To each half shell, add a bit of garlic butter, maybe some bread crumbs, some spices you think you might like, and top the whole thing with a square of bacon. If you don’t eat bacon, use turkey bacon. If you don’t eat turkey bacon, don’t use that either.
Put the clams on a cookie sheet and broil until the bacon is crisp.
THE MARTHA’S VINEYARD MYSTERY SERIES BY PHILIP R. CRAIG
A Beautiful Place to Die
(Martha’s Vineyard Mystery #1)
Death in Vineyard Waters
(Martha’s Vineyard Mystery #2)
Vineyard Deceit
(Martha’s Vineyard Mystery #3)
Vineyard Fear
(Martha’s Vineyard Mystery #4)
Off Season
(Martha’s Vineyard Mystery #5)
A Case of Vineyard Poison
(Martha’s Vineyard Mystery #6)
Death on a Vineyard Beach
(Martha’s Vineyard Mystery #7)
A Deadly Vineyard Holiday
A Deadly Vineyard Holiday Page 23